Toby Ziegler

Tobias Zachary 'Toby' Ziegler, White House Director of Communications, is a fictional character played by Richard Schiff on the television serial drama The West Wing.

Toby and Bartlet

Toby is the only member of the West Wing staff other than Leo to have been with Bartlet since the beginning of his first campaign for the presidency. On the night that Josh came to see Bartlet speak in New Hampshire, Leo fired everyone on Bartlet's staff except for Toby, counter to the expectations of all parties involved, including Toby himself. This incited the ire of then-Governor Bartlet, who protested that Leo had fired everyone but the only staffer whose name he hadn't learned yet.

Toby's relationship with Bartlet is intense and often strained; Toby is seen as the most critical of the staffers, and the most willing to challenge the President's judgment and question his actions; he is also one of the most politically liberal staffers, though this does not always manifest in his policy advice. In season one, it is revealed that Toby was not the President's first choice for communication director, though the President confides in the same episode how grateful he is that his first choice turned down the job.

Background

Toby was born December 23, 1954. His childhood and family are not fully known; he is from a lower-class background, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York; his father, who, according to one episode, "needed the GI Bill," probably fought in the Korean War, and also worked for Murder Incorporated and later served time in prison, complicating their relationship somewhat. Toby's other relatives are less visible on the show; he mentions at one point that his sisters took him to protest rallies in the mid-sixties. Toby also had a brother who was a mission specialist at NASA and who later committed suicide after learning he had a terminal illness.

Toby's education is less well-established than that of his colleagues. However, evidence that he attended City College of New York comes in the first season, in an episode in which Toby plays basketball with the President, he is wearing a CCNY sweatshirt. He also may or may not have a law degree. There are episodes in which Toby asks Josh Lyman about Federal law, and an episode in which Leo McGarry offers the services of himself and Toby to help Josh sue the Ku Klux Klan.

Toby's ex-wife, Andrea Wyatt, is a U.S. Congresswoman and liberal Democrat from Maryland. During the fourth season, it was revealed that Toby and his ex-wife had conceived twins together. His ex-wife is later sued by a right wing group on grounds that her nondisclosure of her pregnancy during her campaign for re-election constituted election fraud. She has repeatedly turned down Toby's proposals for re-marriage. Toby and Andrea's children were born the same day Zoey Bartlet, Presdident Josiah Bartlet's daughter, was kidnapped. They are named Huckleberry and Molly. Huck is named after his maternal great-grandfather and Molly is named after the Secret Service agent who was killed attempting to prevent Zoey's kidnapping.

See also

• The West Wing
• Characters on The West Wing
• List of The West Wing episodes